Jean-Léon GÉRÔME (1824-1904) - Lot 58

Jean-Léon GÉRÔME (1824-1904) Sketch for 'Tiger Watching Cranes', circa 1890*. Oil on canvas, lower left: sketch by J.L. Gérôme. A. Morot. Minor retouching, chips and chips, rubbing and wear to edges. 41 x 32 cm *Tiger watching cranes, circa 1890, (panel 81 x 64 cm. Ackerman, ACR 2000, no. 538.5) collection of the National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson, Wyoming. Jean-Léon Gérôme joined Paul Delaroche's studio in 1840 and took courses in geometry and perspective at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1843, he was awarded 3rd prize for a drawing after Antiquity. After a trip to Italy, he spent a few months in Charles Gleyre's studio, then became Delaroche's assistant. He obtains 3rd place in the first round of the Prix de Rome. From 1847 onwards, he exhibited at the Paris Salon, where he made a name for himself. Private and then public commissions soon followed: decorations for the library of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in 1850, the Saint-Jérôme chapel in the church of Saint-Séverin in 1856 and the home of Prince Napoléon in 1860. He made his first trip to Egypt in 1857 (six more were to follow), where he produced a multitude of drawings that he later used to create his canvases. His painting style shifted from Greek Revival to Orientalist, then to genre scenes and portraits. He began sculpting around 1859, but did not exhibit at the Salon until 1878. Between 1860 and 1862, he set up an independent studio, then opened a workshop at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1864. He exhibited at the Salon until 1903. A fashionable painter, he was received at the imperial court in Compiègne, and also frequented the salon of Princess Mathilde. Member of the Institut de France in 1865, honorary member of London's Royal Academy in 1869, he was awarded the Grand Order of the 3rd Class Prussian Red Eagle in 1868 and became Grand Officer of the Légion d'Honneur in 1900. He was honorary president of the Société des peintres orientalistes when it was founded in 1893. From 1859, Gérôme's dealer was Adolphe Goupil, who also distributed his work internationally through engraving and photogravure (over 370 different reproductions). Gérôme married Adolphe Goupil's daughter in 1863. Aimé Morot (1850-1913) was a French painter and sculptor, who married Jean-Léon Gérôme's second daughter, Suzanne Mélanie. On Gérôme's death, his studio collection, valued at over six hundred paintings, sixty sculptures and hundreds of drawings and studies, reverted to Suzanne Morot. (Musée d'Orsay, Fonds Jean-Léon Gérôme et Aimé Morot, detailed analytical inventory. ODO 2008-3). Tigers appeared in Gérôme's work as early as 1885. Gérôme's most famous painting of a tiger is La douleur du pacha ou Le tigre mort, 1885, which evokes Victor Hugo's poem La douleur du pacha, written in 1827 and published in his collection Les Orientales. Gérôme's depiction of wild beasts, lions and tigers, was inspired as much by the savage power of these great animals as by the link he liked to recall between his first name, Léon, and the noun designating the king of animals. Sale to benefit the Institut Pasteur from "Une collection inédite".